Samsung Gallery’s built-in backup to Microsoft OneDrive ends today , September 30, 2026, as the app pivots to Google Photos for future cloud storage. Unfortunately, not everyone has access yet.

If you currently use the Gallery sync with OneDrive feature to keep a copy of your photos and videos in the cloud, then automatic backups will stop and any existing backups will vanish from Samsung Gallery.

Don’t worry, your OneDrive photos haven’t been deleted. However, you will need to change the way you access them, and if you want to continue automatic cloud backups from Samsung Gallery, you’ll need to switch over to the new Google Photos integration.

Samsung Gallery OneDrive: Where Have My Photos Gone?

If you’ve opened Samsung Gallery and found all of your OneDrive photos and videos missing, that’s because they’re no longer available from inside the Samsung Gallery app.

You’ll need to connect to OneDrive directly to access them, either via the Microsoft OneDrive app or by visiting onedrive.com . The OneDrive app also has a camera roll backup feature that will let you continue backing up your photos to OneDrive without the connection to Samsung Gallery.

Samsung Gallery Now Backs Up To Google Photos

Samsung Gallery now offers Google Photos as the new destination for your cloud backups.

Two Galaxy Store updates must be in place before you start: Samsung Gallery version 15.9.01.7 and Gallery Cloud Sync version 1.6.09.31 or newer. Users of OneDrive sync will be prompted to unlink OneDrive first, after which the Google Photos option should appear.

Note that you’ll need a Google account with enough storage available to hold your backups. You should also be aware that photos and videos backed up in this way won’t appear in Google Photos’ automatically generated media, such as Memories, Highlights or, more importantly, Search.

Samsung Gallery And Google Photos: Some Things Don’t Work Like Before

The new Google Photos integration isn’t a like-for-like replacement for OneDrive, so be aware you’ll lose:

  • Access to your backed up photos as a folder on your computer: Google Photos doesn’t offer this feature; you must access your media through the Google Photos app or photos.google.com . If you want to access your photos and videos on your PC, you have to download them.
  • A genuine pain point for Microsoft subscribers: Reddit comments are already surfacing from disgruntled Microsoft 365 subscribers paying for 1TB of storage they can no longer use for Samsung Gallery backups. Heavy users now face paying for an additional Google subscription in order to continue backing up. The best option here would be to use the OneDrive app, as detailed above.

Samsung Gallery And Google Photos: Do I Even Need This?

Nope. There’s nothing forcing you to stick with Samsung Gallery, and the Google Photos app functions very well as a replacement with no prospect of switching cloud storage providers on you down the line. You’ll also gain full access to a wide range of features not available through the Samsung integration.

Gallery sync won’t bring any photos you’ve already backed up with the Google Photos app into Samsung Gallery; it can only see what Gallery Sync has uploaded from any of your Galaxy devices. What’s not clear is whether everything might get uploaded twice — once for each app.

Samsung Gallery And Google Photos: Problems From The Off

Unfortunately, early social media posts reveal the switch to Google Photos isn’t going as smoothly as it could.

Some users are still not being offered the new Google Photos sync option on deadline day. Others running Samsung’s older One UI 8.5 operating system appear to be blocked from installing the Gallery Cloud Sync app, which the Galaxy Store lists as “not compatible.”

Another gotcha impacts users who deleted their local device copies to save space. Their cloud copies are now stored only in OneDrive with no simple way to transfer them to Google Photos and no way to view them in Samsung Gallery.

Other users have reported missing photos, wrong dates and stalled uploads. Be sure to manually select every album you want to sync to Google Photos; it may default to syncing only the “Camera” album. However, changing this setting didn’t help the specific users who reported this problem.

Another quick heads up: a report from SammyGuru claims that emptying Samsung Gallery’s Trash automatically clears the Google Photos Trash too, so watch out for that if you’re expecting items to remain in there for the full 30 days.

Hopefully Samsung and Google will work together to iron out any remaining kinks during the transition in the near future but, for now, switching to the OneDrive app just for backup or using the Google Photos app as a replacement gallery will ensure you’re covered.